This book examines royal hunts, one of the famous and celebrated court rituals of Europe. Monarchs and princes used this practice on a political level to define and consolidate their power. In fact, they redesigned the territory with magnificent hunting lodges, surrounded by woods for their exclusive use, and they were accessed via a specially designed network of royal roads. This allows us to understand why many of these residences later became palaces that symbolized not only the courts, but absolutism itself.